Lines Blur Between TV, Social Media

More TV shows are embracing social media and establishing connections between their content and outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, AdAge.com reports.

For example, the Twitter feed for The Ellen DeGeneres Show is the No. 3 feed on Twitter in terms of followers, trailing only Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears, and tying in with a segment in which one of the show’s production assistants drove a 2010 GMC Terrain cross-country, followers of @TheEllenShow were able to participate in a gas-card giveaway from GMC, according to AdAge.com.

We’re sort of reaching out to new platforms that we haven’t looked at previously. We know how we engage the consumer through sports and entertainment and through some really nice home-improvement platforms. I’m trying to use the media company as a way to engage via Twitter.

Other examples of synergy between TV and social media offered by AdAge.com: ESPN is offering advertisers the chance to sponsor Web pages that aggregate tweets from different personalities associated with the cable sports network; NBC will debut the NBC.com Communicator, a downloadable tool that lets fans talk to each other via computer desktop as it sends them ad-supported video clips of NBC content; and TBS ran a scroll of selected tweets from fans of its new late-night Lopez Tonight on HD screens in Times Square and in some 300 bars around the country.